


the moon points to the sun

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Brothers, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Communication, Gen, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 13:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: They don't do apologies, Max and Michael. If they started, they'd never stop.





	the moon points to the sun

**Author's Note:**

> for day 1 of rnm week--When we were young. title comes from brother, sister by beta radio, which is a pretty excellent max song
> 
> this fic is not for redistribution without my express permission.

Michael probably ought to be flattered that he’s the last stop on the Max Evans Resurrection Greatest Hits Tour, but mostly he just doesn’t know what to expect when Max calls him out to his house near midnight about a week after he came back to the land of the living. Regardless, he answers the call because all his memories of Max right now are distant and shimmering and clouded behind the barrier of him floating lifeless in a pod. So he meets Max at his house, a twenty-minute drive through the clear, thoughtless night; he meets him right outside the shiny new French doors he put in after he, y’know, shattered the last set.

Max opens with “I’m sorry,” and it rocks Michael back on his heels.

“Apology…accepted?” He says, and he only restrains himself from shooting off finger guns by the sheer kinetic force of the awkwardness already prickling at his nerves. They don’t do apologies, Max and Michael. If they started, they’d never stop.

“No. You have to listen; you can’t…” Max swallows, and it looks painful, forced. Michael shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching ‘cause he learned a while back that Max is the kind of guy who doesn’t take comforting well. So while Michael might want to reach out and smooth everything over, it wouldn’t actually do Max any good.

“Alright,” Michael says, kind of helplessly, “Go on.”

“I’m sorry that I let Isobel think you were a killer.”

The air knocks right out of Michael’s lungs, and the breath that rushes back in is too hot and too cold all at once. With a bone-heavy weariness, Michael does not want to have this conversation, not now that it’s all over and done. But he can also tell in the tension in Max’s every muscle that this is something Max needs to say.

“I let you carry that weight for ten years. And I—I tore into you because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, and I left you with nobody—”

“Max.”

“ _Nobody_ , and taking care of you was every bit as much as my responsibility as Iz was, but I failed and god I am so fucking sorry, Michael—”

“Max!”

See, Max has always done this thing where he firms up his lips in a thin, hard line because if he doesn’t his bottom lip’ll start trembling and once that happens he can’t stop himself from crying. Maybe Michael just knows him; maybe to somebody else, Max might come off all strong and stoic with that straight-backed charisma that got him deputized two years after graduation. All Michael sees is that floppy-haired kid sticking a flashlight under his chin and making ghost noises when Michael had real shit going bump in the night. That kid—he couldn’t have ever understood the stuff that lurked in Michael’s nightmares. But that didn’t stop him from staying up every damn night and making the effort.

Michael snaps out his brother’s name to cut off the words, the confession, the prayer spilling out ugly and rotten between them. Max blinks wet eyes and dips his chin in some aborted half-nod. He holds himself like he’s bracing for a punch, and Michael is so goddamn tired of bruised knuckles.

“You gotta stop, man,” Michael says. “You gotta stop looking for original sin. Giving Iz somewhere else to look other than in those big dark places in her head? That was my choice. Not yours. I put that loneliness on my own back, and I put that guilt on yours, you hear me?”

Max starts shaking his head; he takes a step forward with his mouth gone even thinner and whiter, but Michael just barrels on.

“And yeah, you gave me your anger while you were passing down your own damn prison sentence, but you can’t keep living like this—hell, literally, because don’t think I couldn’t work out that you brought Rosa back and damned the consequences because you didn’t think you deserved Liz until you could fix every single thing that’s ever gone wrong in her life. Newsflash, hotshot—that’s not how people work! Life sucks sometimes, that’s how people work. And when life sucks, we’re supposed to get back up and push through. Don’t you think it’s time the two of us did that? Instead of looking for forgiveness in the mirror? ‘Cause I’m so _tired_ of not having my brother, man. I don’t know what to do about my own mistakes, but I’m pretty sure I can forgive that kid. If he’ll let me.”

Michael ends his speech with his arms spread wide, as open as he can go. Talking to Max isn’t easy; he’s so good at acting like he’s got every little thing figured out that it feels like a crime to walk into his life and get dirt all over the rugs. Even as Michael opens up, Max shuts down. But right now…Michael can’t remember a time where Max ever looked small, but here it is. He stares at Michael for a long moment, losing the battle with tears, then he collapses into one of his deck chairs and drops his face into his hands.

“It can’t—It’s not that easy. It can’t be. You can’t just—”

“Why not? Why’s it gotta be hard?” His defensive heart curls in tight, still wanting his brother to have all the answers, but Max just shakes his head. Michael can’t help himself and steps forward, to grab his shoulder, to shake him a little bit, to make him respond; and Max must feel him getting closer because his head snaps up and the air goes a little static charged.

“Because every time I look at you I see that little kid!” He barks.

On instinct, Michael flinches back, and Max flinches with him, face twisting like he’s in agony.

“God,” he sobs, takes a deep breath, and continues, “When we first crawled out of those pods, you were the very first thing I saw. Do you remember that? I could feel Isobel, of course I could feel her, but I _saw_ you. That’s the only thing I remember from that night. That’s my very first memory. You.”

Shakily, Michael drops into the dust next to Max’s chair. He doesn’t try to make it over to the other chair on the other side of the table, not when they spent fifty years just three feet away from each other. Those early memories are—hazy. Mostly Michael just remembers seeing that symbol every time he blinked. But…yeah. Buried deep, all the way back? A tiny hand reaches out to take his own and pull him out of the cave and into the world.

“I remember,” Michael breathes, and Max makes a wrenching sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“And then everything went so fast. I can’t remember any of it, just that suddenly there was Isobel and me and you were gone, and every night we’d sit on the windowsill and look outside and wait for you, but you never came and we—we didn’t have the words to ask why or how or even cry and—” Max clutches his stomach like he might be sick. “Four years later and I still couldn’t feel you, not like Isobel, and I felt so broken—I had to _ask_ your _name_. You want to talk about original sin? That’s it, right there. Fuck, Michael, that’s why it can’t just be easy, because I don’t deserve—”

“Shut up about deserving shit, man. Didn’t I just tell you that’s now how the world works?”

Michael doesn’t know what else to say; hell, his mouth feels numb and he can barely tell what words he’s saying at all. They’ve never managed to have this conversation without twisting knives, and all he wants is to not fuck it up this time. Max has already been dead once; what if next time it sticks?

Michael says, “The past isn’t going to change, man. You’re not gonna stop feeling guilty; I’m never gonna stop feeling angry. At some point, you have to accept that kind of shit about yourself.”

Max nods, but Michael doesn’t let him speak and carries on:

“But if we don’t stop letting that be all we are to each other, nothing’s ever going to change.” He pauses, his gaze caught on their boots side-by-side in the dirt. Max knows the value of good shoes and keeping them in good shape; his job’s an active one, so he shells out for the right kind of footwear. Michael makes do with what he’s got, and sometimes that means eating light for a too-long while and boots that break down in a year or two.

Their lives don’t line up too well. But that’s an excuse that’s long since worn out its welcome.

“Why did you call me out here?” Michael finally asks, exhaustion creeping up inside his chest. “What did you think was going to happen? You don’t want me to forgive you, so then what?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Max replies heavily. He gestures out into the wide dark desert and laughs a single dead laugh. “Giving you permission to go, I guess? Go find something better, man. You’ve suffered too much already to stay tied to this place. You’re too much, too good, too smart to keep paying for my mistakes.”

Rage punches hot and sudden through the weariness, making Michael clench his teeth against the rising urge to explode, to shake the earth around them. “You have not listened to a single goddamn word I’ve said, have you?” He snaps, and his tone finally makes Max meet his gaze, eyes red-rimmed and shocked.

“I—”

“Seriously. You called me out here past midnight just so you could make yourself a martyr? You think I want that from you? God damn it!”

“Michael—”

“Just listen to me for one time in your life!”

Michael climbs back to his feet, towering over Max’s hunched body. Even at his angriest, his loneliness, his most bitter, he never wanted to see Max broken. And it hurts as bad as losing him again watching him breaking himself.

So he says the only thing he can, even if he can’t make Max hear it.

“If you don’t want my forgiveness, I can’t make you accept it. And hell, maybe you don’t deserve it. Does that feel better, hearing that? Maybe I do deserve a better home than Roswell; maybe I do deserve a better life. But even after everything Roswell did to me, after all the ashes blew away and I was left with the truth that there was nothing more out there worth running to? I made a choice. I chose this place, chose the trailer, chose the—the summers where the street signs fucking warp, the town that’s never going to see me as anything but a fuckup. And I don’t regret that choice, not when that choice gave me love, not when that choice let me finally feel like I had a home. The only thing that went missing was you, but now you’re here, and whether you like it or not I’m going to choose you too.”

The words die in his throat after that. Max still hasn’t moved; he’s not even shaking, even though the fine, honest tremors started up in Michael the second he opened his mouth. But Michael swallows down the hurt and confusion and want for everything to be okay, because not everyone believes with their whole body.

Say something, he thinks, eleven years old and scared nobody’s going to want him.

Frantic to fill the ringing silence, he says, “So that’s me.” His tongue trips and he starts again, “I’ll go if you want me to go. But I ain’t closing the door. I know a little bit about not liking yourself, so if you’re gonna need some time…I miss you, but like, I’m missing what we had at seventeen, and you don’t have to be ready—”

God, the words just won’t stop. His brain’s moving too fast, trying to come up with ten years worth of words now that the dam’s been breached. He presses his lips together to stem the flow; presses them all tight and thin. Just like Max.

Max, who just…loses the battle.

He pitches forward, hands on his knees, great heaving sobs rattling his whole huge frame. Michael staggers forward to catch him, stops himself, then chooses to keep going forward all the same. He thumps his brother on the back like he’s choking, not sure Max would accept anything else. Michael still hasn’t gotten the hang of healing with his hands.

How long do they sit like that? How long does Max spend shedding all that grief and guilt and hating into the dirt? Long enough that Michael’s back starts aching from the way he’s standing bent over; long enough for the high, bright moon to change angles in the sky. When he finally goes quiet, he ends it on a cough, on a shuddery inhale that fills out his chest. And it’s quiet again, only this time Michael used up all his words already, so he just stands there, helpless.

“Can we…try?” Max says, voice strained and dying. “’Cause I. I’ve been missing you for a long fucking time too, man. And maybe I don’t—” He almost smiles, and it’s a tiny goddamn miracle. “Gonna start just calling it the d-word like a middle schooler. After this one. Maybe I don’t deserve another chance, but maybe,” he does smile now, a real quirk of his lips, and Michael almost-smiles too. “Maybe…and you’re gonna like this one…maybe I need to stop thinking I’m the only person who gets to decide what’s deserved, huh?”

Michael has to laugh at that, throwing his head back like he could howl at the moon. Instead, he lets out a whoop of triumph, throwing his arms out wide and shouting into the night, “ _Hallelujah praise the lord_ —”

“Man, shut the hell up!” Max shouts back, and it’s still snuffly, he hiccups on the laugh that fights its way out of his throat, but goddamn if it’s not some progress.

“You gotta give me something or else I’m going to tell everyone,” Michael says, still loud and exuberant like he’s so happy, so hopeful he wants the stars to hear him.

“I’ll give you my guest room and pancakes in the morning,” Max says with a flicker of desperate light behind his eyes. Like he thinks Michael might still say no.

No way. Michael just grins, a little kid again.

“You’ve got yourself a deal. But those pancakes better have blueberries in them, or I might make you re-negotiate, lawman.”

“Oooh, that’s a hard bargain there, outlaw. I don’t know if I’m willing to negotiate with the likes’a you.”

“Maybe I let ya off easy this time outta respect,” Michael drawls, clapping Max on the back as he strolls past and consciously does not hesitate on the threshold of Max’s home. The chair scrapes the concrete patio behind him, and Michael swipes his hat off his head and hangs it on the peg by the door.

A year ago, he would’ve said he was too old, too bitter for cops and robbers and scary stories told by flashlight. But now, for all he’s not getting any younger, he’s gonna start treating that kid that’s still inside him, that’s inside Max and Isobel too, with a little more respect and a little more love. He’s making that choice.

And this time, it’s going to stick.

**Author's Note:**

> i juuuust want them to be bros again for real ;-;
> 
> tumblr @ cosmicsolipsism  
> discord @ haloud


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